I'm having problems with importing some substance materials

[Dzibus Allmighty]

I've downloaded some Free .sbsar files from Substance Source and the only one that works is Bull Leather, rest of them just crash the app, while Adobe Fuse CC says Substance is incompatible.

Is this because the Batch tools are outdated and is there a way to re-export them (with .sbs file) to be compatible using the latest Substance Designer or Painter?

[Pte Jack]

SBS files are not compatible with FUSE, these are the substance source files for creating materials in Substance Designer.
sbsar files should be compatible with FUSE. These are the files used by Substance painter.

sbsar files cannot be converted back to sbs files, and sbs files can only be converted to sbsar files through designer.

[Dzibus Allmighty]

Hi, thank you for a reply.

I know that .sbs is a source file and it can't be imported in Fuse, I tried to import .sbsar archive files only and all of them fail except for one.

I was just asking, because some free files can be downloaded both as .sbs and .sbsar (ironically, only the one that doesn't fail has just the archive), is there something that can be done while exporting from latest version of Substance Designer to make the .sbsar compatible with Fuse?

US$20/month is not a bad deal for Tools + 30 assets (on top of the free ones), but if the files exported with latest version of Designer are not compatible with Fuse, it's not worth it for me atm.

[Pte Jack]

I have Designer 2019. Can you link one of the sbs files so I might try to expose it and see if it works in FUSE (Steam) or FUSE(CC)

[Dzibus Allmighty]

https://source.substance3d.com/allassets/94f5797f15ded405708c8cb391cc078d4598ad94?free=true&player=true

but since substance3d just redirects to login every time, then goes to All Assets, you can go to Free category and download Jeans Fabric

or just download from this link -> https://test.allmighty.dev/fabric_jeans.zip

[Pte Jack]

I've downloaded both the SBSAR and the SBS, let me check compatibility. Which version of FUSE do you prefer this in, Steam or AdobeCC? (Should have asked that before, DOH!)

[Pte Jack]

Hmmm, this is weird, the Sbsar will not import (as you pointed out to begin with.) Loading it into Designer, I find that the SBS was created in Designer 6 and had to be updated to Designer 2018 standards. On conversion, this material looses a lot of its detail and the graph is nuts... Doing a basic publish of the material, the resulting Sbsar is still not compatible with Fuse 1.3 or FUSECC.
I tried finding some documentation on this, but the search was futile. Fuse documentation says to refer to Substance Designer documentation and the Designer documentation has nothing on FUSE requirements. (Typical!)

I know I can bring the sbsars from FUSE into Substance painter. But I'm not having any luck going the other way especially with this particular material/texture.

I wonder if I can bring this into SP, create a preset and get it back to FUSE that way??? Hmmmm

[Dzibus Allmighty]

So, I've downloaded the trial of Substance Designer latest version 2020.1.2 (10.1.2) and Rust Brown source (.sbs) and played around a bit.

I have managed to export it and successfully import it in Fuse (at the time of writing just Steam version, but it should work in Adobe CC as well, because it uses the same version of Batch tools) with some tweaks.

How to do it:

1. Go to Edit -> Preferences, then on the tab PROJECTS, change Compatibility Display from Substance Engine v7 to Substance Engine v4 and hit OK.

2. Some nodes will get a thick yellow border, that means it's not compatible with v4 and you need to find replacement for them.

3. When there are no more incompatible nodes, just export as .sbsar and import it in Fuse


I opened Fabric Jeans to try the same, but it has far more complicated structure and I have been using the program just for few hours so i gave up on that, but will try to download other free materials to confirm that this is in fact a solution.

[EDIT] just tried with Raw Grey Concrete and it works.

So i guess it's viable, just need some elbow grease :)

[Pte Jack]

I've been playing with this as well and have found that both Fuse 1.3 and Fuse(CC) don't mind substances created for Substance painter 1.x and Substance painter 2, but they do not like substances created for SP2018 or 2019.

If I try to import or out rightly copy and paste SP2018/19 compatible Sbsars to the custom folders, both version crash, either on import or on launch.

The "Can't copy substance "name" to Annex directory" error is being caused by the Import Preference setting (found in the Edit Preference) I had to manually create the folder path.

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Mixamo\Fuse\Data\Substances

for FUSE 1.3 however, the path for CC should already exist..

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Adobe\Fuse\Data\Substances

This is where the custom substances are imported to.

I'm going to try Dzibus Almighty's suggestion and see if I can get SD to convert a compatible material for that Jeans SBS and Sbsar you linked earlier.